Paper grain may be defined as an anisotropic material property in paper due to a tendency for paper fiber orientation to align with a web processing direction during manufacture. In addition, residual stresses induced from the drying steps in processing also contribute to anisotropy. For example, in web machine processing of paper, fibers of paper sit upon a substrate such as a screen, additives are added and thereafter the fibers and additives are dried. The substrate may be removed and the structure of fibers which forms the paper may be wound onto rolls. In this illustrative process, strains are placed upon the paper in the web machine direction which tend to result in the fibers being aligned with the web machine direction as opposed to the cross web direction. As discussed below according to one embodiment, hard imaging methods and apparatus are described for determining a direction of the grain of the media.